Damaged Goods
by Athena Alexandria
Summary: Jate AU. Jack is broken. Can Kate fix him?


I was going to try to hold off on writing this until I finished my other fics but at the rate things are going, the show will be over by then! I've had this idea for a few weeks now and I'm pretty excited about it so I wanted to put it out there. I haven't written a summary yet, but this will be another slow build romance AU, along the lines of Bedside Manners and Brother's Keeper. ;)

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Chapter 1.

Coming to surrounded by the steady blip of hospital monitors, Jack figured that he must have fallen asleep while checking on a patient, as he often did during long shifts, until he opened his eyes and realised that the view was all wrong. He wasn't with a patient: he _was_ the patient. Craning his neck to get a sense of the room that he found himself in, he noticed his father camped in the chair at his bedside, still wearing his rumpled suit and lab coat and a weary expression. "Dad?" he croaked. "What happened?" He tried to think back but his head hurt too much.

His father sat up straighter, running his palm over his face as if to wake himself up. "You were in a car accident last night."

Jack felt sick to his stomach as a terrifying thought formed through the haze of pain and morphine and sleep. "Was anyone…?"

"No. Fortunately yours was the only one involved," his father assured him. "You hit a tree, doing almost ninety-five in a seventy zone. You're lucky to be alive."

Lucky wasn't the word Jack would use to describe it. He fought to sit up, only to have his efforts thwarted by the discovery that his leg was being supported by a traction splint, the complex system of weights and pulleys making him dread the time when he would need to use the bathroom.

"Don't try to move," his father warned him; too late to save him from the fresh wave of agony that seemed to start in his head and travel down all the way down to his toes.

Every bone in his body felt broken. "What's the diagnosis?" he asked, resigned to the fact that he wasn't leaving that bed any time soon.

"Aside from a concussion, and some superficial lacerations and contusions, you're suffering from at least two fractured ribs and an open femoral shaft fracture."

Jack was so used to being the one to deliver bad news that it was strange being on this side of it. "Great," he groaned, closing his eyes and groping for the morphine button. That was going to make the next few weeks fun.

"Now that you're awake, your leg is going to need surgery," his father continued, even though he wasn't sure he was ready to hear to prognosis. "They want to put in an intemedullary rod. We're talking _months_ of physiotherapy, not to mention the time off work. It could take up to a year for you to fully recover."

He was filled with a kind of dull annoyance at his father's mention of his job, as though it was all just a way to inconvenience him. Did he even care that his only son had almost died?

"When they brought you in, you had a blood alcohol reading of 0.17 per cent," his father told him and Jack's eyes snapped open. Had he really drunk that much? He'd lost track once he started to feel the effects. "I should have let them put it in their report. What were you thinking, Jack? You could have killed someone."

Ironic, coming from the man who downed half a bottle of scotch every day before entering the OR. "So why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I what?"

"Why didn't you put it in your report?" he insisted, gearing up for an argument. He'd never asked for special treatment. He broke the law: why shouldn't he deal with the consequences? "I kept your secret for you, so you figured you'd return the favour? Or were you just afraid that I'd turn you in?"

He wondered if he'd gone too far when his father gaped at him as though he'd struck a physical blow, rage and sadness mingling in his expression. "I protected you to keep you out of jail," he hissed, lowering his voice. He stared at him for a long moment in what Jack thought must be disgust. "You better pull yourself together son."

Neither of them registered the young brunette woman's presence until she pulled her flower cart up to Jack's room. "I can come back later if this is bad time…" she offered, shifting uncomfortably when both men turned their eyes on her; it occurred to Jack that they must appear pretty hostile. He wouldn't blame her for running. He would too if he could.

"No need," his father assured her, using the arms of his chair to push himself up, and Jack felt a pang of guilt at how old and worn he looked. He couldn't imagine what had gone through his head when they paged him to the ER. He didn't want to. "I was just leaving." He shot Jack a hard look as he exited. "Think about what I said, Jack."

Jack sank back into the pillows when he was gone, shifting his attention to the woman by the door. He thought he knew all of the volunteers, but he was sure that he'd never seen her before. She was stunning, even with her dark curls knotted back from her face in a messy ponytail; a girl that pretty would surely have left an impression on him. "You don't happen to have any spirits there, do you?" he asked her.

His feeble attempt at humour managed to break the tension in the room and he could see her begin to relax too. "Wrong sort of cart," she retorted with a faint smirk, dragging it over to the bed. "I do have flowers." She lifted an arrangement of brightly-coloured gerberas from the bottom shelf with a flourish. "These are pretty. Do you want me to put them in water for you?"

He couldn't think of anyone who would send flowers to him. "You must have the wrong room," he told her.

"You're not Jack Shephard?" she said, frowning at him.

"Well, yes…" he agreed.

"Then these are for you," she insisted. She fished the small, white envelope from between the stems, holding it up so that he could read it. "See? Your name is on the card."

He took it from her, puzzled, wondering if they could have come from some of the scrub nurses; his heart sank as he scanned the familiar loopy writing:

'_Jack,_

_Wishing you brighter days ahead._

_Sarah.'_

Just as he'd come to expect from her in the months since she announced that she was leaving him for someone else, it was short and to the point: polite but impersonal, without warmth or affection. While it was clear from the tone of her message that she was concerned about him and the turn his life had taken of late, it wasn't enough for her to consider visiting him. He wasn't even sure how she'd found out. Someone from the hospital must have called her.

Ignoring the burning in his ribs, he flung them away from him, watching with a sense of grim satisfaction as they hit the wall and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.

It took him a moment to remember that he wasn't alone; when he glanced over at the woman, she was staring at him in a mixture of surprise and confusion. "People don't usually have that reaction when I bring them flowers," she said and he began to feel embarrassed that she'd witnessed such a juvenile display.

"They're from my ex," he explained. "I guess she feels guilty."

She nodded sagely, as if this made perfect sense to her. "Looks like you're having a rough day," she remarked with a wry smile.

The simplicity of her words startled him; he began to laugh, so hard that it sent fresh ribbons of pain down his side. "Rough _year_ would be more accurate," he corrected her, although if he was honest with himself, his current injuries were more the result of his own stupidity than bad luck.

As she joined in his laughter shyly, he decided that she had a nice smile, her freckled face kind and full of sympathy as she asked, "What happened? To your leg, if you don't mind me asking…"

"I had a little run in with a tree," he quipped, careful to omit the more sordid details, like the fact that he was more than twice over the legal limit.

She screwed up her face in an exaggerated wince. "That's gotta hurt."

"You should see the other guy," he joked, pleased when he succeeded in bringing out another one of her smiles. He glanced at the nametag pinned to the front of her t-shirt. Kate, it read simply. He decided that it suited her.

"Well I hope it gets better for you," she told him sincerely, returning her hands to the handle of the cart.

Of course his wasn't the only delivery that she had to make today, he reminded himself with what he realised was a stab of disappointment, though he would miss her company when she was gone. There wasn't much else to do except lie there feeling sorry for himself. "Thanks." He waved a hand at the sling that held up his calf. "I'm not sure how it can get any worse." It was hard to cause further destruction to your life when you couldn't move.

"You could break your _other_ leg," she teased him as she turned to leave, somehow managing to put it into perspective for him. It was true that it could have been worse. He of all people knew that.

She paused when she reached the door, throwing him a mischievous grin back over her shoulder. "See you around, Jack..."

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Next chapter: Kate tries to cheer Jack up... ;)


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